Noida headquartered Rail Yatri, the technology start-up which is graduating from being an information provider to millions of railways travellers to a consolidated marketplace offering non-ticketing options, is going to add hotel booking offering on its basic application. The service is slated to kickstart in a month’s time. This was divulged by Manish Rathi, Co-Founder & CEO, Rai Yatri in an exclusive conversation with Tourism First.
“As we make a decisive move towards becoming a consolidated marketplace in the non-ticketing railways segment, hotel booking is going to be a major thrust area for us. We want to provide hotel booking options to railway travellers using our app. We are likely to start this service in a month’s time on an experimental basis,” Rathi said. As per the details shared by the company, Rail Yatri during the initial spell of hotel booking rollout is looking to provide this service at 15-20 locations in the country. “Our first list will be primarily focusing on destinations where either the business travel is high or religious tourists footfall is commendable. Jammu, Amritsar and Ujjain which will be hosting the mega Simhastha Mahakumbh later this year are going to be part of this list. We are talking to local hotel operators in these locations,” elaborated he. For its different product verticals – food, cabs and hotels- the company has formulated different standard specifications which a partnering vendor in its network will have to adhere.
Recently, Rail Yatri has also introduced food e-commerce wherein rail travellers can order food at 80 stations using its app. “ The response from our application users is quite encouraging and during the course of the year, this offering will be extended to more railway stations in the country. As per our own research, we can offer these services at as many as 5000 railway stations in the country and that precisely is our aim. We are just starting these services after building a base with millions of railways travellers in the past three years wherein we were working as a reliable information provider on railways travel,” Rathi pointed out. The company claims to have registered over 1 million mobile download of its app in the formative years. “Now that we have begun bundling concrete services offering alongwith information, this number will multiply at a random speed. We expect over 10 million downloads by the end of this year,” Rathi said.
